There was to be a 2-Headed Giant Legacy (!!) tournament in Versailles at a shop called The Arena, so skaro and I decided to get the band back together. Dimmu Burger would once again enter battle to defend their honor, fight for justice, slay the beasts, and exaggerate wildly.
Having been out of the competitive Legacy loop for some time, I felt it necessary to leave it to skaro to come up with our decks. That, and it would be really easy on me if he did all the work. We kicked around a couple ideas anyway, but then he presented me with something that I had never dreamed of, couldn’t conceive of in my wildest imaginings, and wouldn’t have believed possible had I not seen it with my own eyes.
((SPOILER ALERT: The deck is based on a rough list he found on tappedout.net, found
here.))
The deck is based on
Timesifter, an innocuous artifact from Mirrodin; innocuous, that is, if any card that says “take an extra turn” can be called “innocuous.” What the card does is, everybody reveals the top card of their library at the beginning of each upkeep, and the highest cmc gets an extra turn after this one. I’ve had a playset of these forever (not forever
literally, but ever since they came out; see previous comment about exaggerating wildly…), but I’d never figured out a way to break it. There has to be a way to ensure that you will have the highest cmc every turn, or it’s just random madness (which would be fun, but the Burger aims to win!).
But this deck has found a way! Here are the lists, and I’ll let you see if you can figure it out before I ‘splain it, ‘kay?
skaro’s Half4x
Exhume4x
Reanimate3x
Living Death4x
Personal Tutor3x
Grim Tutor3x
Spoils of the Vault4x
Lotus Petal3x
Ponder4x
Brainstorm4x
Show and Tell4x
Timesifter1x
Flying Spaghetti Monster 4x
Underground Sea4x
Polluted Delta2x Swamp
1x Island
4x
City of Traitors4x
Ancient TombMy Half4x
Grozoth4x
Omniscience4x
Autochthon Wurm (did you know that
autochthon is a real word?)
4x
Bringer of the Blue Dawn3x
Bringer of the Black Dawn4x
Hypnox4x
Terastodon4x
Bringer of the Green Dawn4x
Artisan of Kozilek3x
Reya Dawnbringer3x
Jin Gitaxias, Core Augur2x
It That Betrays2x
Hand of Emrakul3x
Spawnsire of Ulamog2x
Furnace Dragon1x
Deep-Sea Kraken1x
Blazing Archon1x
Inkwell Leviathan1x
Myojin of Life’s Web1x
Pathrazer of Ulamog1x
Spirit of the Night1x
Platinum Emperion1x
Iona, Shield of Emeria1x
Emrakul, the Aeons Torn1x
The Unspeakable (we don’t talk about it)
The first thing you might notice is that skaro’s Half is a veritable murderer’s row of Legacy brokenness. There’s Show and Tell, Grim Tutor, four fetches, and so on. There’s also a lot of reanimator stuff, but I’ll get to that in a minute.
The second thing you might notice is that My Half has no land. That’s right,
no land. Dumb? Check! And if you look a little closer, you’ll see that the lowest cmc of any card in My Half is eight. That’s right,
eight. Big? Check!
In case you’re having one of those days and haven’t put two and two together, or if you just don’t want to think that hard about it and would rather I get on with this bidniss, or if you’re trying really hard to understand but just aren’t that bright… Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, sorry.
The deck works because of a fundamental rule of Two Headed Giant (2hg): both players on a team take their turns at the same time. Basically, the team gets a turn. So if one player would get an extra turn, both do. Cool huh? And, since My Half has nothing but ridiculously costed things in it, the Burger is virtually guaranteed to get those extra turns.
So the infinite turns part is covered, but how do you win? skaro’s Half was initially a combo/control thing, dedicated to finding Timesifter and cheating it into play asap. I think his first draft had the Exhumes and a couple Living Death, but it also had 4x
Force of Will and 4x Omniscience. We goldfished the deck a few times with that kind of configuration, and used “logic” to determine that Omniscience was unneeded; the only real way for him to play it was with Show and Tell, and the only thing it would be used for would be to play Timesifter for free. Hell, why not just Show and Tell Timesifter itself? Add some more tutors or card draw to fish it up, and just do that.
We toyed with the idea of adding some planeswalkers, but in the end I convinced him to roll with 4x Reanimate; after all, why shouldn’t he get to play with big scary monsters, too? Spoils of the Vault was a late addition – our life is only a resource to be exploited, might as well burn it up finding Timesifter or Living Death. To make room for the extra Reanimates and Spoils, I talked him into cutting the Force of Wills. We also decided that each deck should have a single Flying Spaghetti Monster; I knew I would feel better with it, because in our testing, with Jin Gitaxias out, I found myself a couple times drawing way too many cards before skaro found a Living Death. And if you’re going to have a big scary monster, it might as well be the biggest and scariest of them all, right?
My Half started out as just big and dumb, but skaro decided that it should be a big dumb toolbox – the Biggest Dumbest Toolbox Ever! Hence the Grozoths; when he comes in, I tutor for whatever 9 cost fatties I want. They will inevitably be discarded (or Omniscienced), and then rise from the grave (Exhume, Living Death, Reanimate) to do their toolbox thing. Unfortunately, the selection isn’t great (and skaro was pissed that Omniscience cost ten instead of nine). Blazing Archon, Iona, the Bringers, and Terastadon (who costs eight, dang it) are about all we have for toolbox, unless you want to count sexy little Reya.
Anyway, after our testing and whatnot, we decided that the deck was as good as we were going to make it. skaro made the observation that for a big dumb deck, we had actually put a little effort into trying to optimize it. And we chuckled over how the deck’s focus had changed from take-all-the-turns into a reanimation thing. While taking all the turns, of course.
Right before we leave for the venue, skaro asks why the hell Omniscience isn’t in My Half. And I’m like, you’re a genius! And he’s like, I know, right? And I’m like, that’s too big and dumb to leave out! And he’s like, I know, that’s why I thought of it. And I’m like, why didn’t we think of that before? And he’s like, I know, it’s like we’re not real bright or something. And I’m like, I want to free cast all the things! And he’s like, free cast all the things! So we held hands and skipped around the room, giggling and singing "free cast all the things, free cast all the things!"
We didn’t really hold hands and skip. That would be silly.
I’m sure there are plenty of interactions and synergies I’m neglecting to mention, and I’m omitting much of the thought process that went into the design, but you didn’t come here for that. You want action! And I aim to deliver!
Arrival at the ArenaI was pleasantly surprised by the shop. I had expected something similar to the one in Tipton (which I have previously described as a "shithole"). It was clean, well-lit, and with plenty of room to play. There were only three other teams present, but I believe that’s enough to get it sanctioned. And the entirety of the entry fee would go for prize support – store credit, which was fine with me.
Since our prizes would include only that which was for sale in the store, we spent some time eyeing the merchandise. Not a big selection, but he had packs for sale, and a box of tokens. Oh yes, tokens. Zombie Horde deck, here I come!
Round 1 – Melissa and Steve – BR and BGI was disappointed that the guy didn’t ask for our team name when we registered. You know who we are – Dimmu Burger! – but I guess nobody else had clever team names. (Spoiler Alert: this is really the only problem I had with the entire enterprise, but it’s a minor quibble, so I’ll shut up about it.)
Anyway, Melissa and Steve seemed like decent people, and I, for one, would hate to kill them. But kill them we must, because that is the Burger’s business. They were both quasi-gothed out: both had fingernails painted black, Melissa wore a choker with a bell on it, and Steve spoke with a British accent. They also had cool card sleeves: Melissa with a cyber angel thing, and Steve with zombie American Gothic. I had meant to compliment them on their choices of MtG accessories, but I never got around to it.
It was very quickly obvious that they weren’t all that experienced, and I almost felt bad when skaro dropped a turn three Timesifter. That bad feeling went away when we were abruptly informed that "old school rules" were in effect – players share mana pools. With their shared mana, Melissa was able to blow up the Timesifter before we went infinite. With only one extra turn, we had to actually play the game (skaro didn’t find another cheatin' card quick enough, dagnabit).
It was also at this point that both skaro and I were wishing for those Force of Wills that I talked him out of running. That was a good idea, huh?
So anyway, skaro Exhumed an eldrazi into play for me, but unfortunately, Melissa had an active
Assassin Royale, and the little bastard did my big scary monster in (and then died to the annihilator trigger). Another Exhume, and more of the same. We aren’t doing much, and then Melissa plays a
Skullcage: each opponent takes 2 dmg during their upkeep unless they have exactly 3 or 4 cards in hand. I had 7, of course, and skaro had 1. Of course.
That bad feeling I mentioned earlier was completely gone now. The Burger was about to die to an obscure Fifth Dawn card that both skaro and I had to read to see what it did. Shit ain’t funny, man! And, even though skaro played a Timesifter immediately after, we could die without the bad guys ever getting another turn. The thing was, they were completely tapped, so there was nothing they could do to win except not die before us. And there was a very real possibility that Skullcage would kill us before then.
Luckily, skaro managed to return a Terastadon from my yard, and I destroyed the offending Skullcage with extreme prejudice. I elected to not destroy any other permanents; Terastadon can’t hit critters, so the damn Royal Assassin that kept coming back was safe, and they had nothing else threatening. Besides, why give them free elephants?
So I had the Terastadon, and a stray eldrazi wandered into the party. I had promptly forgotten all about the elephant token I had given them, and attacked with my big dumb dudes. Eldrazi got assassinated, and Terastadon got blocked. GAHH ROYAL FUCKING ASSASSIN!!!
And then, very anticlimactically, skaro Grim Tutored for Living Death, and I attacked for 50-something on our next turn. They died with the Burger at 7 life.
Steve and Melissa both smoke, so they joined us outside after the game. We talked for a little while. Turns out, Steve began playing in July after Melissa completed her seven year quest to get him into the game. He hates EDH, but Melissa likes it. Melissa also likes black, red, and vampires (goth chick, remember), and Steve likes green (n00b, remember).
1-0
Round 2 – Buddy and Brendan – GWB Junk and BRThey won the roll and went first. Buddy got a
Voice of Resurgence into play turn 2, and my suspicions were confirmed when one of them mentioned that they were playing Standard decks. They had a lot of Standard stuff: the Voice, new scry lands, and so on. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking that all these people here brought knives to a tactical nuclear warhead fight, and I almost felt bad for everyone. But I push that shit away – the Burger feels no mercy! No remorse, no regret!
And we set out to prove it. skaro plays a turn 2 Show and Tell and drops Timesifter into play. Cute. I drop Omniscience, and proceed to vomit my hand of fat all over the universe. I set each card on the table, and as each one hits there is a resounding boom. I didn’t notice it at the time, as I was way more interested in the blinding light of my own awesomeness, but skaro later told me about Buddy’s reaction. He said that he leaned back in his chair, his eyes wide, and rubbed his hair back. I can only imagine the look of “oh shit,” and it looks good!
The problem with Timesifter is that you don’t immediately win. The opponent gets a turn since the first trigger happens during upkeep. We won the Timesifter flop, of course, and would never let them take another turn, but they got one chance to untap and try to deal with our heavily muscled and not-so-agreeable goon squad. Unfortunately, thanks to the “shared mana pool” bullshit rule, and the fact that one of my big scary monsters was Platinum Emperion, they were able to nuke my army. How, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you!
They cast
Killing Wave for 5.
Killing Wave says everybody sac your creatures unless you pay life for each one. In this case, 5 life. Platinum Emperion says that my life total can’t change. And the reminder text reminds me that that means I can’t pay life, either.
Stupid reminder text!
Didn’t matter, though; next turn, skaro cast Living Death. The goon squad came back, and next turn tromped all over them.
And here I must ask that we all bow our heads in a moment of silence for the brave little Voice of Resurgence token that valiantly gave his life in an ultimately futile attempt to defend his homeland. You will be remembered, you poor bastard.
2-0
I decide that this is an opportune time to rummage through the box of tokens. I need zombies for the horde deck, remember. I start pulling every zombie and angel token I can find, and skaro joins me. I have no idea what he’s looking for, but I notice he grabs a goat. I start throwing goats at him. This is not the metal throw-the-goat that many sadly and wrongly refer to as the rock fist, but actual goat tokens.
Absorbed in my quest for zombies (and a sweet Unglued pegasus token!), I never notice that skaro wandered off. He hollers at me a few minutes later as it’s time for round 3 and everybody’s waiting on me.
Round 3 – Kyle and William – BG scavenge and BRWhat’s with all these people and black? I just now realized that every single person at this tournament was playing black. Except for me, I guess. I mean, I have black cards in My Half, but I’m not really playing black.
And now that I think about it, I’m not positive I ever got a black card into play…
This game was so fast and furious that I could probably give you an honest to God play-by-play. Let’s try it!
Turn 1, Kyle and William play lands (Kyle with the BG shockland dropping them to 28), and William plays a red dude that can soulbond with another dude to give them both firebreathing. I discard a card I don’t want to talk about, and I think skaro played an Underground Sea. Again, I almost feel sorry for our opponents – dude plays a random card, and then has to pick up skaro’s Underground Sea to see what it does. He evidently recognizes what it is and its value, and then asks what the big deal is, why’s it worth so much. Kyle answers with something to the effect of “it’s worth more than my entire hand.” (skaro later privately quipped “worth more than his entire deck,” which might be an exaggeration, but prollly not by much.)
Turn 2, Kyle plays a
Lotleth Troll and it soulbonds with the previously mentioned firebreathing dude. Can’t remember what William did. skaro plays a 2-mana land and casts Show and Tell. He flops his Emrakul out for all the world to see, and I drop Reya Dawnbringer. Kyle drops
Varolz, the Scar-Striped, and William drops a land.
Hmm, I may have skipped something. At some point, the shared mana pool thing comes into play and Kyle uses William’s mana to cast a
Grisly Salvage. This was at the end of one of our turns, and it put some things into his yard for Varolz to scavenge onto the Lol Troll. Got it? Good.
So anyway, turn 3, there’s the scavenge action, and the Lol Troll attacks. It’s quasi-big at this point, but Kyle and William are tapped out. We’re thinking we should block, but Kyle and William are horrible at bluffing and we can tell something’s up. We elect not to block with the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and take the damage. Well, something was up, and they pump the troll up pretty good by discarding dudes to it. Damn troll hit us for 14, dropping us to 16. Ouchie.
Wait a dol-gurn minnit! That’s our schtick!
Oh, and William
Dreadbores my Reya. Burn in Hell, bastich!!
Our turn, skaro turns Emrakul sideways and blasts em down to 13 from 28. And then he must contemplate his hand.
His available mana would allow him to cast either Grim Tutor OR Exhume and Reanimate. We’re at 16, and that Lol Troll is huge. When Emrakul attacked, they had to sac 6 for its annihilator, but they still have the troll and two available mana. There isn’t anything good in their yards for Reanimate, and if he grabs anything of mine, we go to a perilously low life. (Yeah, yeah, I know I said that our life total is a resource to be exploited, but let’s not get carried away here! Dat troll be BIG!) And, since it’s only like turn 3, the only things in my yard are a card I won’t talk about and Reya – not exactly anything to take a bullet for.
So we cuss and discuss, and I eventually talk skaro into casting the Exhume only. I grab that one big dumb critter that I shouldn’t ever even refer to, Kyle grabs Varolz, and skaro and William get left out in the cold with no critters to return.
Their turn and the troll is comin’, comin’ ta GIT YA! Tokens are furiously counted, math is furiously calculated, sweat is furiously dripped from foreheads. A block is made and seven damage is absorbed, but the troll tramples over for fourteen damage.
Fourteen, are we sure?
The block…the scavenge…how many tokens…yeah, fourteen damage.
Thank the maker, the Burger is still alive!
Down to two and more than a little relieved to have survived this nonsense, we take our turn. Kyle and William are both slumped back, fully aware that the game is over, and I’m just waiting for skaro to unleash his eldrazi god. But skaro doesn’t seem to realize that it’s all over but the crying. He untaps, examines his hand, plays a Ponder, contemplates how he wants to order them. The rest of us are like, dude just attack. Not quite sheepishly, he giggles and sends the beast.
3-0
AftermathVictorious, the Burger was ready to enjoy the spoils. $20 store credit for each of us, not a bad return on investment. There was a pair of
Face the Hydra decks in the case, and skaro and I both had our eyes on them. So those decks are part of the pot. I found an even 50 tokens I wanted at a dime apiece (mostly zombies, but also a bunch of angels and demons, that Unglued pegasus I mentioned, and a couple other random things), and the itty bitty dollar rare box yielded some good stuff, including a few dragons for the Zirilan of the Claw EDH deck I’m working on. The shop owner (Ron?) threw in some Hero cards to go with the Face the Hydra decks, and then bagged my stuff in a totally awesome bag that features a DnD dragon on one side, and an MtG dragon on the other. Nerdgasm! And while I was ripping cards out of his dollar box, he was setting cards that he’d previously priced at $2 into that $1 pile, saying, “eh, I think this is a buck.” Pretty cool, the dude knows how to make customers happy. And I was happy!
I’m still feeling that we were simply too overpowering for the metagame, and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I mean, it’s a tournament; you pay to play and you play to win. But these people were so outgunned. Only the last game was really close (and it didn’t even have to be had skaro and I been more familiar with Lotleth Troll and what could have - and did - happen). I mean, we have the capability to take infinite turns and puke out 50+ power worth of creatures into play on turn 1. What’s more, during our testing we both got out Emrakul on turn 1 once, for cripe’s sake! skaro told me that at one point during a game, he looked down and realized that he had $1000 worth of cards face up in front of him. And, for the whole tournament, the
gentlest killing blow we delivered was from Emrakul!
Overpowering? I would say so.
Then again, you pay to play and you play to win.
Hell, I don’t know.
But I do know that I got a kick out of overhearing our previous opponents talk about how they were unable to deal with our deck.
I was feeling a little trepidation going in, kind of worried about how our opponents would react if and when we started taking infinite turns and cheating big scary monsters into play. In my experience, young nerds (which I expected to face) have a tendency to rage when they feel they haven’t been treated fairly, and by them feeling treated fairly, I mean that they expect to win. But I was pleasantly surprised by how cool everybody was. Nobody got pissed, nobody ever said "that’s bullshit," and nobody ever even rolled their eyes. Overall, a very acceptable environment. Kudos to the owner. Would attend again.
Now, having said all that, how would I change the deck? I wouldn’t. It’s the Biggest Dumbest Deck Ever, you don’t just go and change that shit around!
Would I play the deck again? Hmm, I’m not sure. I think I would prefer something a little more…I don’t know. Was this a little too combo for me? Perhaps. Dimmu Burger is an amalgamation of combo (skaro) and control (me), and I think skaro got to scratch his combo itch with this deck. For our next adventure, I think I’d like to scratch my control itch. I admit, and I’m not necessarily proud of it, but I got a hankerin' for some prison/stax action. I feel the need to toy with my opponents, to watch them squirm, to offer them the barest glimmer of hope and then snatch that hope away with an evil laugh. Does that mean I’m a butthole?
I’m not sure I can pick out an all-star from our deck. I think Exhume did the most work, but I’d say that Living Death was probably the biggest of the big guns. Timesifter was really only relevant in Game 1; we never saw it in Game 3, and in Game 2 we rode that timely Living Death to victory (with a little set up by Show and Tell for Omniscience).
So if Living Death is the stud, who’s the dud? Many of the big dumb monsters were just big and dumb, so it’s hard to pick just one. They served their purpose, though, which was to fuel Timesifter and deal buttloads of damage.
Every time skaro talks me into playing 2hg, I find myself glad I let him do it. Personally, it’s easier for me to remember that I generally know what I’m doing when I have my buddy there to confirm my thoughts. And this time at least, it was just as much fun putting the Biggest Dumbest Deck Ever together as it was crushing puny mortals with it. If not more! I’m looking forward to the next one.